Gil gave a theatrical sigh. “Hope it was worth it?”
Sam had a sudden flash of Marc spanking her, asking after every second stroke if she was okay, if she wanted him to stop. Fucking hell, maybe she shouldn’t see him again?
“Yes,” she said with absolute reassurance. “It was worth it. Now, please get out of the way so I can get my stuff.”
Gil gave a mock bow, moving aside so she could collect her client book and coffee mug. Sam’s head throbbed with the effort of bending over. Why had she decided to go out last night? She’d seen Banksia’s band multiple times and it had been a Wednesday, for fuck’s sake.
We’re only young once, she told herself, but lately that felt like an excuse. For one thing, as wedding dress pop-up ads kept trying to remind her, twenty-seven wasn’tthatyoung. For another, she’d been meaning to stay in and work on prep sketches, not get wasted and have half-hearted sex with a guy who didn’t really have a personality. Sam wasn’t always the choosiest person when it came to love but a personality was a pretty basic request. Otherwise she might as well strap a sex toy to a man-shaped pillow.
“Regretting choosing pleasure over business?” Gil enquired.
“My pleasure is always open for business.”
As soon as Sam said it, an image came to her. A pinup dame in a 90’s power suit, money bursting from her pockets. She was giving the viewer a cheeky wink, a flash of garters peeking out from under her skirt. “Shit, can I have a…?”
Gil was already holding out a sketchpad, along with a 2B pencil. Sam sat on the customer couch and sketched as fast as her hand would allow. Twenty minutes later she came back into herself. Her picture was exactly as she’d imagined it—the dark-haired villainess winking up at her, cigar in hand, promising a good time and a hell of a hangover.
“Nice,” Gil said, looking over her shoulder. “Moving on from greyscale and classical and entering your self-portrait phase, are you?”
“What? She doesn’t look like me.”
Her colleague grinned from ear to ear. “Show Noah and your old man, let them decide.”
“I will!” Sam stood, feeling glassy-eyed but exhilarated, the way she always did after a good sketch. She’d been in a flow state, as her dad called it, the only time she truly escaped her head. If only she could get her shit together and make it happen on a regular basis…
Tomorrow.Tomorrow.
“Where’s Noah and dad?”
“Noah’s in room one, finishing off the tat on the kid from Seoul,” Gil said. “No idea where your old man is. He wasn’t here when I got in. I had to help Noah open.”
Sam ignored his ‘woe is me’ tone. Gil had been working at Silver Daughters for a year and while he was a decent artist, he was a world class whiner. “What do you mean, dad wasn’t here?”
“Pretty self-explanatory.”
“We live upstairs,” she reminded Gil. “He’s not in the house, he’s not here, so where the hell is he?”
“Maybe he finally bought a phone, downloaded Tinder and got himself laid.”
If the mental image wasn’t so gross, Sam would have laughed. Her dad hadn’t so much as been on a date in twenty years. He was an attractive man—a not-cunt Johnny Depp was everyone’s general assessment. He got hit on by female clients almost as much as Noah, but he’d never accepted propositions. He never said it out loud, but Sam knew he was waiting for their mum to come back. It had been two decades without so much as a phone call, but still he postponed romance; pouring his attention into his business, his garden and his daughters. Acknowledging that always made Sam feel woefully inadequate, but today it was even worse. There weren’t many twenty-seven-year-olds that still lived with their dads, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her father was funny, a great cook and gave her (and her fly-by-night dates) plenty of space. She owed himeverything. Ever since Tabby moved out, he felt like all the family she had.
“I’m gonna go look for him,” she told Gil. “Sit tight.”
She headed for the back of the studio.
“We still on for drunk trivia, tonight?” Gil called after her.
Shit. She’d forgotten about that. Every month, the Silver Daughters Ink staff went out for some not-so-friendly competition with a few other studios. In theory, they were playing bar trivia. In reality, they were seeing who could drink the most and she, Noah and Gil were solidly committed to winning. Sam bit her lip. The smart thing would be to stay in, hang out with her dad, work on her designs…
“I’ll be there. But I’m not going to get too drunk.”
Gil grinned. “We’ll see.”
As Sam headed for her dad’s office, it occurred to her Gil had just earned forty bucks in wages without doing a thing. As the general manager, it was her responsibility to tell him to wipe the counters, call clients, sketch, or at leastlook busy. She hesitated, half-turned and decided she was too hungover to play effective boss. She’d bring it up after she found her dad.
Edgar DaSilva’s office was as chaotic as always, paper over every surface, ancient filing cabinets crammed full of shit without any organizational rhyme or reason. Sam scanned the space, as though her dad might be hiding behind his cracked brown swivel chair. He wasn’t. Obviously.
Sam sat down and sighed. She felt like a world class bag of shit. If her dad wasn’t in, she could finally sort through the paperwork, maybe follow Nicole’s advice and scan—